Monday, April 18, 2011

Monarch Butterflies Cupcakes

They took a bit of work, more than I would've done if I had know before hand. The brilliant people from Hello Cupcake designed these.

There are a few steps so...

First, you need white and chocolate melts, M&M's (only brown), and white sprinkles. I got everything from a fantastic local store Kitchen Kneads (I started shopping there just because of the awesome name). Then on a piece of parchment paper you draw the outline of 2 sizes of butterflies, one small and one large and antennae for the small and large.

So you melt small amounts of white melts, I used my Pampered Chef microwave bowl, and color them the dark orange for the butterflies. Then melt a bit more of chocolate, put it in a Ziploc bag and start piping in on wax paper over the outline that was drawn on the parchment paper. Once you have a thick outline with the chocolate, then fill in with the orange and before it hardens, use a toothpick to swirl the chocolate in with the orange. Then sprinkle with the white sprinkles.....then do it about 70 more times.

Don't forget to do the antennae.

When the chocolate dries, which is does very quickly, they pop off the wax paper really easily. Just be careful not to leave fingerprints in the chocolate.

Once you have enough butterflies for all your cupcakes--two to three small butterflies can fit on one cupcake, so make more of them---you need to ice the cupcakes with yellow (or blue or green, whatever floats your boat) then you stick the wings into the cupcake at angles to look like they are flying. It was easier if I put them next to each other once they were done so I could see how they would look when they were set out all together, and then I knew which ones to make "fly" more and which ones I could have their wings a little more open. Then you take a M&M for the "head" and pip in chocolate frosting down the middle to look like it's body.

Then just slide in the antennae and TaDa! Your done!

And it only took...all day!

They are really cute, but I think people were intimidated to eat them. They didn't want to ruin them or something, I don't know. But they were cute.

(I was showing my husband this post and he told me they were "creepy" and too much to put in your mouth. So maybe take that in mind when you think of making it.)